Thosethingswesay

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

You Go, Miss Sweden

Now, the thirteen-year-old boy never too far from the forefront of my brain always has been and likely always will be willing to cheer, "Go, Miss Sweden" for reasons that neither need explaining nor reflect well on my emotional growth.

But this time I can say it in public without fear of embarrassment.

Last night, apparently, the Miss Universe pageant happened again. One would think that modern medicine would prevent this sort of thing, but perhaps the pageant has developed an immunity. Anyway, Miss Japan, Riyo Mori, edged out Miss Brazil for the title. And, since Donald Trump owns the Miss Universe pageant, the lucky Miss Mori will have "class" stamped on her ass for the next year as she travels the universe teaching schoolchildren the importance of looking hot in a zebra-print bikini and not falling over in public.

But the actual class of the evening was Miss Sweden, Isabel Lestapier Winqvist, who withdrew from the competition because she found it degrading to women.

Now, before we all go slapping our foreheads and explaining to Ms. Winqvist, "Um, duh," let us first remember that she's twenty. And let us also pause to discover, as I just did, that for the past couple years the Miss Sweden contest has put more emphasis on the talent and poise portions of the contest and completely eliminated the swimsuit contest. So it's plausible that the Miss Universe pageant's gender and organizational lameness really did come as a surprise to Winqvist.

Winqvist's withdrawal raises an interesting question: why is there still a Miss Universe pageant for her to withdraw from?

600 million people watched the thing last night, and I don't get it. I've investigated the matter thoroughly and discovered that if one wants to look at attractive women in bikinis, one can do that for free and with great success on the internet. Or by watching "The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll." Or by going to the beach or the park. And if one wants to listen to attractive, well-spoken women mouth platitudes, one can watch cable news (as Samantha Bee puts it, "News I'd Like to Fuck") or pretend to be a doctor interested in what drug company reps in short skirts have to say about their samples. Not only are beauty pageants archaic in that they promote very tired standards of female excellence (nice gams, good teeth, cheerfully empty conversation) but they promote those tired standards in a tired fashion. Even if one wants to see women objectified (and that demographic ain't going away any time soon), there are thousands of more creative options out there.

So, really, who are those 600 million people? Rachel Ray fans? The audience of "America's Funniest Home Videos"? Convicts who can't change the channel? Twelve-year-old incipient femme lesbians? I'm confused.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Just How Expensive is D.C.?

I live in New York but a few times a year, I go to Washington D.C. on business. Though hotel rooms there are expensive, just about everything else in that city is far cheaper than it would be in New York. I'd guess that a $100 dinner for two in New York goes for $60-$70 in D.C. D.C. is a big city and it charges big city prices but if you spend even a few days there, you realize that it is far cheaper than Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco.

Now, we hear from a CBS News National correspondent that because of proposed reforms that will make lobbyist donations to congressional reps more transparent and that might demand a longer period away from the capitol for retiring congress reps who want to become lobbyists that some congressional reps might actions leave their posts behind.

The argument is that D.C. is just too damned expensive to live in without having access to lobbyist money.

Those guys are surely lucky that our capitol isn't in New York, L.A. or San Francisco.

But what about the fact that millions of people live in D.C. at wages far less than a congressional wage, without the perks of campaign donations and free golfing trips to Scotland? How is it that an office worker in D.C. can find a way to live in a house or apartment, feed themselves or start families without lobbyist support while our reps complain that the capitol is too expensive?

The fact is, D.C. is only marginally more expensive than Philadelphia or Chicago. If our correspondent from CBS is right, and she probably is, then our congressional reps are complaining about living in a city that, while expensive, is also successfully inhabited by the types of people that congressional reps are meant to represent.

I guess that means that certain members of congress believe that the day-to-day struggles faced by the average American are unbearable. It's interesting to me that these people support a system that demands more of the average American than they're willing to bear themselves. They must think they're better than the people they represent. That's not healthy.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

A New Pottery Barn Rule

The hardest question about Iraq is whether or not we're stuck with having to keep troops there because our invasion caused the whole mess. The question implies that we have a moral and practical reponsibility to stay in the war until Iraq emerges as a functioning, secure democracy. Colin Powell called it "The Pottery Barn" rule and I was amused to see how quickly The Pottery Barn stepped up to assure it's customers that they follow no such policy.

Besides, it really isn't "you broke it, you bought it." It's "You broke it, so you have to fix it."

Imagine a Pottery Barn that ran by that rule. Imagine I knock a pottery vase off a shelf and it shatters into a million pieces. I lay down newspapers on the aisle and set to gluing the thing back together. As I do this, other shoppers trip over me, flail around, complain that I'm in their way and get glue all over themselves. Meanwhile, my cell phone is ringing as friends and loved ones want to know why I've been at the Pottery Barn for six hours. "Just come home," they say.

At some point the Pottery Barn manager will realize that I'm incapable of fixing the vase. At some point the manager says, "Just go." Or even, "Go, or I'll call the cops."

We broke Iraq. But that doesn't mean we can fix Iraq. Indeed, our efforts at fixing it might just be making things worse. No, they are.

It's irresponsible to pretend that we can fix what we can't fix. The responsible thing is to admit that this is beyond us and to go home.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

A New Look

Several new readers have dropped by. And, it hasn't been the first time that somebody requested a change from the old white text on black background format. Here's hoping this one's easier on the eyes.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

We Should Probably Look into His Soul a Little Closer

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently suggested that George Bush is a Nazi. This generated a lot of back and forth, controversy, blah blah.

What nobody seems to have noticed is that Putin meant it as a compliment.

Of course, it was a pity compliment. Putin's way better at fascism than Bush. (Damn the American constitution for restraining the genius of our leaders!)

Compared to Putin, Bush is, well, a bush-league fascist. Bush seems unlikely to insist on changing the constitution to take another term. He's not even bothering to hand-pick his successor.

Putin, on the other hand, seems intent on staying in power forever. And to that end he's helped to assemble a group of young people crazed with nationalism and vibrating with resentment that Russia isn't the world's most powerful empire. They go around intimidating foreigners, dissenters, democracy advocates. They're arming themselves. They drill protecting television stations against people dressed in orange (in case Ukranian democracy should threaten their beloved oligarch and Russia's mostly state-controlled media).

And guess what these nationalistic, über-patriotic, lockstep-marching young people call themselves?

Nashis.

Yup. Nashis.

Well, I think the actual Russian plural is Nashii, but the group really is called "Nashi" ("ours" in Russian).

They're getting more and more organized and, apparently, better armed.

But, of course, when they invade Stalingrad, it will be to save it from itself.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Leopards and Spots

So Paul Wolfowitz is out at as head of the World Bank. Some will argue that it was his fight against corruption at the bank, and that he was just deeply unpopular as the architect of the Iraq war, rather than his own self-serving actions that caused the ouster.

Actually, as a liberal, I do have some sympathy for the argument that he was ousted for fighting corrupting in the bank. Think back to the globalization debate that started in the late 1990s -- we lefties have always found the World Bank to be a corrupt institution., conservative enough to be sympathetic to Wolfowitz, lays it out very well, I think.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifwhen they say that "Instead of formulating a plan, selling it to the bank's board, customers and officers, and then acting on it, Mr Wolfowitz acted first, and had a strategy thrust on him later."

Well, that does seem familiar now, doesn't it? Couldn't it be said that Wolfowitz treated Iraq the same way? Read that quotation again (slightly altered):

"Instead of formulating a plan, selling it to the US Intelligence community, US military and citizens, and then acting on it, Mr Wolfowitz acted first, and had a strategy thrust on him later."

Do I believe that the World Bank is corrupt? Yep. Did I believe that Saddam Hussein was corrupt? Yep. Did Paul Wolfowitz deal with both situations by charging in withouth a stragety? The Economist admits it... Yep.

Get Government Out of Marriage

So today is the one-year anniversary of gay marriage in Massachusetts.

Unsurprisingly, gay marriage in Massachusetts has divided not just America in general but also gay activists. Some think that it shows that the civil unions granted by some other states are actually reinforcing gays' status as second-class citizens; others think that it's stupid not to take the full advantage of whatever rights one can get, civil unions included.

I think the one-year gay marriage anniversary drives home that the states should stop issuing marriage licenses period. It's becoming increasingly clear that people want two, radically different things from marriage: first, a sacrament and, second, a set of secular rights. There's no reason for one institution, particularly a governmental one, to provide people with both.

As a sacrament, marriage should be the domain of religious communities. The government shouldn't get to determine whether you've been properly circumcised, baptized, or introduced to the inner mysteries of the thetan. So there's no reason the state should be judging and solemnizing the sanctity of your sexual union. Your imam or your priest or your rabbi can keep on conducting marriages, but that's none of Uncle Sam's business. (And why is Uncle Sam such a confirmed bachelor?)

The call for secular rights is about two things: dignity and economics. Dignity is a consideration because gay people don't like the government's claim that "marriage is good, but it's not for you." They resent being second-class citizens. Fine, but take marriage off the table for all citizens, and we're all riding in first class.

As an economic unit, marriage is only one of many possible, viable arrangements that can and do help to safeguard the well-being of those involved, including any children. Right now, there are a host of secular rights that go with being married, but there's no reason that these couldn't be granted individually or collectively by a binding legal document. Of course, maybe it would make sense to preserve the notion of domestic partnership, at least until we have a health care system in this country that doesn't encourage you to get married so that your partner can get dental.

But there's no reason to call that "marriage." And there of plenty of good reasons not to.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

And You Thought He'd Bottomed Out

Yes. It turns out that Alberto Gonzales is such a bad guardian of the law that he makes John Ashcroft look like a fearless crusader for civil liberties.

In testimony before the Senate judiciary committee today, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said that on March 10, 2004, then-White House Counsel Gonzales and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card rushed to Ashcroft's hospital bed to pressure him to renew the NSA's domestic warrantless wiretap program. The then-secret program needed the attorney general's periodic approval of the president's authorization in order to continue, and the deadline for that approval was March 11.

Ashcroft told Gonzales and Card to go screw. Moreover, he told them to go screw twice over because even if he had wanted to sign the re-authorization, he couldn't have. Comey had already assumed the office of Attorney General for the duration of the emergency gall bladder surgery that had put Ashcroft in the hospital that night.

So in trying to pressure Ashcroft to sign the re-authorization, Card and Gonzales weren't just attempting (and failing) to make a sick and borderline delirious man sign an important document against his will. They were doing so in order to get a signature that, exactly like the program it was supposed to authorize, would've had no legal validity anyway.

Perhaps even worse, Alberto Gonzales is such a douche-awful guardian of the law that he makes President Bush look like a crusader for professional conscience and competence.

When Card and Gonzales tried to convince the President to go ahead with the plan--as it was in place then--even without the legally necessary authorization, Bush learned that Ashcroft, Comey, FBI director Robert Mueller, and other high-ranking Justice officials were planning to resign in protest. Bush told Card and Gonzales that the program needed fixing before it could continue.

I mean, it clearly wasn't a sufficient fix, but jeez. When George W. Bush thinks you're demanding too much blind loyalty and John Ashcroft thinks you're not respecting civil liberties, you're... well, you're what we already thought. Only, miraculously, even worse.

Jerry Falwell

Being religious doesn't make you a good person. A life lived according to principles is only as good a life as those principles allow.

Jerry Falwell thought we deserved 9-11 and Katrina and he thought that because he's an anti-homosexual bigot. That was one of his principles: that it's bad to be gay.

Jerry Falwell thought that a Teletubbie was gay and indoctrinating toddlers in all matters of Gaydom.

Jerry Falwell can't take a joke and in that he made his best contribution to society by losing a lawsuit against Larry Flynt in front of the Supreme Court.

So if the rules of polite society dictate that I have to say something nice about Jerry Falwell then I want to thank him for the thin-skinned crusade over a joke that would have been forgotten and for all he did for free speech by fighting and failing.

In his most bitter defeat, he gave us a boon.

If there's a heaven and Jerry Falwell is in it, that's the only thing that would have gotten him past St. Peter. Too bad I don't believe in that stuff. It would be fun to imagine.

(Falwell stands nervously at the gates to heaven. St. Peter sees him and laughs.)

St. Peter: Bet you're worried.

Falwell: Actually, I little. I know I shouldn't be...

St. Peter: Oh, you should be. Racism, homophobia, illegal use of donated proceeds for political purposes, a willingness to take money from poor people who could ill-afford to send you their hard-earned money...

Falwell: I thought I was doing the Lord's work.

St. Peter: Jerry, we're talking about God here. If he wanted money from poor people he'd just, you know, take it.

Falwell: Oh.

St. Peter: But, you did help free speech.

Falwell: I did?

St. Peter: Not on purpose. You were trying to stop it. But that's why we like you, Jer. Your incompetence outweighs your misdeeds.

(The gates open.)

St. Peter: You will, uh, have to do about ten million years community service. Mostly picking up trash and cleaning the mansions of dead homosexuals. You don't have a problem with that, do you?

Falwell: No sir. No, not at all.

St. Peter: And, for once, try to do a good job. We can always change our minds and send you somewhere else.

Falwell: Hell?

St. Peter: Baghdad. You know, on second thought, you should clean the mansions of the war-dead as well. Only fair.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Clinton!

Actually, to my mind, this is not the big question. Though I have not decided between Clinton/Obama/Edwards/Richardson in this season's primary, I can say that I'm not overly concerned about Bill Clinton's influence on Hillary Clinton's campaign.

If anything, I think having been first lady to a president for eight years gives Hillary Clinton an advantage because there's no way anyone can argue that she doesn't know what being in the top job is like. Also, Bill Clinton was a highly successful president and thus he has groomed myriad advisors who could help his wife should she achieve that office.

But we shouldn't forget that she's the one who is the first "First Lady," to launch her own political career and to win national office. We also shouldn't forget that for all the vitriol that's been tossed at her since I was a kid that she's such a brilliant and admirable person that when Bill first ran for office he trumpeted a "co-presidency" with Hillary as a selling point.

The fact is, no matter how she achieved national recognition, Hillary Clinton is a viable and qualified candidate for the presidency. Better her for the last eight years than what we got, for sure.

I might vote for her in the primary. At this point, I honestly don't know. But all of the inevitable speculations about Bill's role will not factor into my decision. She's serious, she's qualified, and she's worth considering. Had she never been First Lady, I might not know who she is right now, but those things happen in life. However she got to the national stage (and there have been stranger routes than hers, consider that Rudy Giuliani was hated in New York until 9-11, which was a random event) I'm glad she's on the stage.

The BS Express

John McCain is on "Meet the Press," right now. He just said that anyone in congress who is against the war should defund the troops and demand they come home.

Thanks for the friendly advice, John.

Everyone who feels that the war should end now knows the truth -- Bush would simply allocate other government resources to keeping his war going and the whole thing would wind up in a supreme court battle about who has the power to do what. Democrats would be painted as "against the troops" while the battle is played out and even if Bush lost in the Supreme Court he'd have been able to extend the war by months while fighting his case.

Instead of following McCain's bad advice, what war opponents are trying to do right now is to legislate an end to the war in a timely and orderly manner. What we want is to fund the war towards an end and that end is our withdrawal. Anti-war members of government are offering a reasonable path towards ending the war without either precipitous withdrawal or the Bush option, which can best be translated as "war without end."

The Giuliani Threat

The threat of Rudy Giuliani is that he is a Republican who will appeal even to right-leaning Democrats and who might bring some states in the typically Democratic-leaning northeast in the general election.

First, of course, Giuliani has to win the Republican nomination. To that end, he's arguing that Republican primary voters should look past his abortion stance (he's weakly pro-choice) and should also ignore his many divorces and estranged children and his flip-flopping on equals rights for homosexuals.

One question is, why should Republican primary voters settle? Obviously, there are strategic reasons and I think a lot of Republican primary voters know that the current president isn't helping Republican chances in 2008.

Giuliani himself is probably confused by years of being a New York City Republican. Those types tend to be socially more liberal than most of the country, though Giuliani does have a "law and order" reputation despite a liberal stance on some social issues. Still, I assume Giuliani is confused about what will work nationally. Here in New York City, mayor Mike Bloomberg is a Republican. Elsewhere in the country, people tend to call the guy an indepedent.

I just don't see why Republican primary voters should compromise so much as to nominate Giuliani, especially given John McCain's primary failure in 2000.

But, they might.

So, in 2008, a more important question could loom. Why should a moderate Democratic primary voter pull the lever for Giuliani? By the time Giuliani gets to the general election (if he does) he'll have moved so far to the right that moderate voters sholuld realize that he'll no longer be a viable candidate.

Make no mistake, Giuliani would continue the Bush foreign policy that has so weakened the Republicans in this election cycle. On social issues, he'll have moved so far to the right that he won't really be a New Yorker anymore. I think the best a moderate voter can say for him is that he won't be a massive threat to Roe v. Wade in terms of judicial nominees but given that judges often surprise their presidents, the error will be on the anti-choice side, no matter what position Giuliani is taking on the issue by 2008.

In New York municipal elections, the Republican candidate is often just a guy running outside of the confines of the Democratic machine. That's not true nationally. If Giuliani gets the nomination, people should realize that he'll only get there by being an actual Republican. Everyone will call him a moderate, ad nauseum, but he just won't be one.

Obviously, Republican primary voters aren't going to take voting advice from this blog (and they shouldn't) but I will say this -- I'm a progressive for a reason, so I don't support conservative candidates who run under the Democratic party label, even though people do that all of the time. I wouldn't vote for a Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman or even a Joe Biden. So if any Republican primary voters do pass by this post, I would ask them to consider that. In primary season, it just makes sense to support a candidate who supports your view of the world.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Camel Toes and Dog Parts, A Requiem

For-profit, mass-market broadcast television is slowly disappearing, and that's mostly for the best.

There's not a lot about broadcast TV that I'll miss. Cable, the internet, and Netflix provide both a wider selection of audiovisual entertainment and less mutilated versions of films and TV programs. And cable shows are just generally better than network shows.

However, when network TV finishes migrating to other media platforms, I will miss the unparalleled opportunities it affords to relish the hilarity of the networks' efforts to provide the salacious, violent, and foolish programming that the vast majority of Americans want while at the same time trying to defend against FCC watchdogs routinely goaded into action by a big-mouthed minority of self-styled decency crusaders who buy their panties pre-bunched.

There is nothing so contorted and peculiar as the position of Standards and Practices departments, i.e. the network censors. In large part, that's because network censors have to spend much of their professional lives telling writers and directors that the things that Americans fantasize about constantly or experience daily would somehow destroy the American psyche if they were to--gasp!--appear on a television screen.

Equally bad, network censors are supposed to make sure that there's no "offensive" content in shows the sole purpose of which is to offer precisely such content--Law and Order: Drunken Child Molester, The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll's Gag Reflex, CSI: Death-Porn San Diego.

Anyway, network censors have a silly, thankless, and soon-to-be eradicated job, so I'd like to pull them off the court before the end of the game so that the home crowd can give them a big cheer. Yay, censors!

Also, if we're looking for an epitaph for the tomb of the network censor, I'd like to suggest two, both of them pull quotes from this week's Entertainment Weekly interview with four anonymous network censors:

I didn't know what a camel toe was. My staff looked at me and said, "I cannot believe you do this job and don't know what it is."

And my favorite:

A viewer called the other day about a new show and said the dog in it had an erection. I called our folks in Washington and said, "Talk to me about obscenity with respect to dog parts."

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

More War Years!

Four years ago, the President declared victory in Iraq. Ever since then, pundits on boths sides of the aisle have told us we need to wait longer before we know if it's a success or a failure. The most popular line is for people to ask us to wait six more months that Atrios at Eschaton has dubbed a "Friedman Unit" for NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

The current buzz is that the drop-dead date for Iraq is in September.

Not so, apparentlty. Some have already anticipated that date and have asked that we wait until the spring of 2008.

I'm reminded of a great line from Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies -- when he was confronted with something he didn't like he suggested "How about... no."

A Genuinely Horrible Oil Idea

The other shoe may be about to drop.

When Pres. Bush first called for the US to attack Iraq, liberal protesters everywhere busted out their "No Blood for Oil!" placards. I remember at the time thinking, "God, I really hope this isn't primarily about oil." The intervening years have ensured that, whatever Bush's original intentions, the invasion and occupation hasn't been primarily about oil--Iraq has been too much of a mess for occupying it to be about anything but trying to fight the insurgency.

But now that oil is back. The Iraqi parliament is now considering a bill that essentially started with the US State Department. The bill is being sold in this country and in Iraq as a deal to arrange revenue sharing among Iraqi regions. But the bill's main purpose is to oblige Iraqis to give over at least 70% of the nation's oil to foreign oil companies. (By "foreign," I mostly mean "American.")

This is beyond disgraceful--it's borderline wicked. Iraq's infrastructure is in terrible shape, but the Iraqi oil ministry can still pump oil and is doing so. Surely if we're serious about the country ever recovering from the devastation that we've helped generate, we should do everything we can to ensure that the country has a stable, meaningful revenue stream in the upcoming years. That means a system in which the profits from oil sales stay in Iraq rather than leaving the country.

Passage of this awful oil bill has become one of the famed benchmarks that Democrats and Republicans alike are insisting on. The Democrats, at least, should stop playing around with this. The Iraqi parliament's handing over its country's one real source of immediate revenue wouldn't prove its ability to govern--just the opposite. That's a no-brainer.

Before the invasion, Paul Wolfowitz and the entire Bush administration was insisting that Iraqi oil revenues would basically pay the costs of the war. Obviously, that pipe dream has long since been flushed down the pipes and the pipelines. Economically and otherwise, America is going to be paying for this war for a long time, and it's no use pretending otherwise. Even if you somehow think that the Iraqis "owe us," remember that we as a nation wouldn't get anything out of the proposed oil bill anyway. The oil rights wouldn't go to US taxpayers. They'd go to multinational oil companies, some of which happen to be headquartered in the US. So the only way any American taxpayer will get to see any of that oil is to pay $3.62 per gallon at the pump. And since we'd be doing that anyway, I'd rather that the money go to Iraqi elementary schools than to Exxon's Cayman Islands accounts.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Oh My God, Terrorists Attacking Fort Blix!

Sigh.

Let me just go out on a limb here.

They're a bunch of losers with no international support or military training who bought some guns and went out into the forest waving them around, screaming about Jihad and they're so dumb they taped themselves doing it and then brought the tape in to a store to have it transferred to DVD. If one of them ever shot at you the safest place to stand would be right in front of them because they can't aim.

They're not members of Al-Qaeda and couldn't put a phone call into a real member of Al-Qaeda if they wanted to.

Though you have to take it seriously because they have real weapons, they're really just a step or two up from kids running around with sticks that look like guns and yelling "Cobraaaaaaa!"

If the G.I. Joe cartoons were real, General Hawk or Quick Kick or somebody would have just told them that pretending to be a terrorist isn't cool and ended the lecture with "And that's one to grow on." Or something.

Okay, enough about the fake terrorists. The media should leave apologetic comments on this blog when they realize that I'm right.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Why We Don't Need Al Gore

The first Republican presidential debate revealed that of their ten candidates, three of them don't believe in evolution.

Wrong on the facts of life and wrong on Iraq. They're fucked.

As for the Democrats... there is a legitimate drive to get Al Gore to join the ticket.

I like Gore and if he runs for president, I might vote for him. But, I am already convinced that I could support any current Democratic primary contender who is not Joe Biden, should they get the nomination.

30% of their side doesn't believe in science. 100% of our side does. I have my disagreements with every candidate but I could work with any of them, given that they, you know, believe in the way the world works.